Shading Your Cat’s Eye with a Gradient in Adobe Illustrator

Hello, dekeAdventurers. In this week’s free Deke’s Techniques episode, Deke demonstrates how he created the shading and sculpting of…well, the eye socket…of his cat’s eye.

The heavy lifting of the shading business is done by a custom radial gradient, which immediately creates a deep divot from which this cattish creature will be staring at you.

A custom radial gradient applied to the cat eye project


Then, by accessing the shape via the Opacity Mask created weeks ago, Deke creates an eye shape filled with black that can be used to create a drop shadow (and later tucked behind the actual eye).

An eye-shaped drop shadow with the Drop Shadow panel


If you’re a member of LinkedIn Learning, Deke’s got an exclusive movie this week in which he shows you how he uses variable-width strokes in Illustrator to add detail around the eye.

Cat eye with variable width strokes applied for depth


Next week, thar’ be dragons.

Next entry:Turning Your Cat’s Eye Into a Dragon’s Eye (Changing Colors in Illustrator)

Previous entry:Blending Reptile-Like Scales in Illustrator (revisited, now that most of the votes are counted)

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